Hip-hop has been officially grown for some time now. The latest classic record to turn 20 was a mind-blowing one for our generation. We hadn’t heard of dead prez in March of 2000… no one had.
Word of mouth drove the popularity of Let’s Get Free–Tracy and I were both put on by our big brothers, and years later it was one of the albums we bonded over as a new couple.
As teenagers just entering social consciousness through Nas, 2Pac and as many books as we could read, group members stic.man and m-1 broke through with the most rebellious and truthful album we’d ever heard.
The eerie intro blaming white society for the crack era’s devastation of Black communities connects this album to the late nineties hip-hop themes we understood. Then the first song (“I’m a African/never was a African-American”) showed us what Let’s Get Free was going to do: knock over every important American institution, one by one.
Getting Black youth to call ourselves Africans was a huge deal, whether we were American, Jamaican, Haitian or even Puerto Rican. For many of us, it was the beginning of our decolonization.
Next, in order, dead prez took down the public school system on “They School,” our elected officials on lead single “Hip Hop,” the police on “Police State” and prisons on “Behind Enemy Lines.” Wow.
At the time, I’d have compared that streak of hard beats and harder-hitting lyrics to Biggie’s opening four songs on Ready to Die or Nas’ opening trio on It Was Written (my favourite album). Black and Latinx youth, children of immigrants and oppressed people all over understood and felt their anger because of our state-sanctioned suffering at the hands of those powers.
The album doesn’t fall off from there though; instead, it switches gears.
“Mind Sex” turned many young women into dead prez fans, and it’s one of the best executed hip-hop love songs ever. “Be Healthy” and “Discipline” are somewhat preachy joints we didn’t really want to hear as teenagers, but badly needed. What a departure from the rising materialism of the music of the time and the thugged out era that preceded it.
Stic and M-1 rapped over the catchy sample that we loved in “Psychology” (‘Ye used it years later on “Diamonds of Sierra Leone,”) with bars like, “my comrades stand on land stolen/every tooth a golden opportunity/ who holding my community hostage?”
There are no songs we don’t love on Let’s Get Free, but one more important song takes aim at the media, but stands out for a few lines critiquing another institution beloved by Black folks: the church.
“I believe man made god/ outta ignorance and fear/ If God made man, then why the hell would he put us here?/ I thought he’s supposed to be the all loving/ The same God who let Hitler put the Jews in the oven.”
Damn. Most of us weren’t ready for that at the turn of the millenium, but along with the rest of the album, those lines proved to be ahead of their time. Let’s Get Free and its politics age better than most classic 90s albums, as do the production and lyrics. Run it back today and tell us if we’re lying.
LP’s available for purchase from dead prez (and Jeff’s latest book!)
